WASHINGTON — Keeping with tradition, freshman U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner on Tuesday struck a lofty and optimistic tone as he delivered his so-called “maiden speech” on the floor of the upper chamber.

In the roughly 15-minute address, the Colorado Republican touched on the beauty of his home state and compared the opportunities of the Western frontier to those available today to the entire country.

“Our love for Colorado drives us to be better stewards of the land. To reach for solutions to great challenges,” said Gardner in prepared remarks. “For generations, we have challenged our sons and daughters to always look up — look up to that great Rocky Mountain horizon, as our ever-young state and ever-hopeful attitude lives peak to peak, the honor of living in the west, a land of opportunity and new beginnings.”

In many ways, the speech was a continuation of the 2014 campaign Gardner ran against then-U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo. He spoke broadly about the major issues of the day without dwelling too long on specifics, other than to note the need to strike a balance in coming up with a solution.

Gov. John Hickenlooper delivered his fifth State of the State address today to Colorado lawmakers. (Photo By Brent Lewis/The Denver Post)

Gov. John Hickenlooper ended his remarks to the Economic Club of Colorado on Tuesday with a warning for the state’s business leaders.

A major focus of his second term is preparing for Colorado’s impending growth — with 3 million more residents expected in the next 20 years, he said. The Democrat said Colorado is growing “almost too rapidly” and the growth costs money.

“We’re probably going to have to spend a bunch of money that will take the business community stepping up,” he said, saying industry leaders will need to recognize the need to spend money on roads and infrastructure.

“To get the infrastructure in place to make sure we have this capacity for growth certainly can’t be done just by government. So that’s my point really today to come talk to you, which is to say get ready because we are going to have to ask,” Hickenlooper continued.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, one of the chamber’s few vulnerable Democrats facing re-election in 2016, needs to raise serious cash and quickly.

Bennet started the 2016 campaign cycle with $1.2 million in the bank, federal finance reports show. It put him in the “loser” category in an analysis by The Hill and earned a jab from national Republicans.

The 2016 presidential election is all the rage in Washington and the fever is starting to spread west to Colorado.

This weekend, MoveOn.org is coordinating house parties across the nation to encourage Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president.

Warren has said many times before, including in Colorado, that she is not interested. But it’s not dampening the “Run Warren Run” effort.

A Denver event at a rooftop condo in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, hosted by Steven Olberg, is booked with 40 people registered to attend. Another in Greeley is expecting eight participants and a Colorado Springs event will draw 18, organizers say.

The event is timed one-year-to-the-day before the first votes are cast in the Democratic presidential primary, according to organizers.

An event for an actual potential candidate’s campaign — Democrat Hillary Clinton — is scheduled for Monday in Denver.

Smart Politics’ Eric Ostermeier at the University of Minnesota found that libertarian U.S. Senate candidates in 10 of the 20 states where they appeared on the ballot set new high-water marks for support.

Gov. John Hickenlooper addressed the topic of race relations Friday in an event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, but largely sidestepped the issues of racial tension and law enforcement following the deaths of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York.

In his speech, Hickenlooper made a passing reference to the Ferguson shooting but didn’t offer any thoughts on how to address the situation.

“We see the events of Ferguson, we see the reaction to those events and wonder how do we respond?” he said at the Martin Luther King Day Social Responsibility Awards luncheon in downtown Denver. “Obviously we continue to search for leaders and to look back on our history and look with clarity and honest about where we’ve been.”

In an interview after the speech, Hickenlooper did not voice support for any police reforms or other state action to address issues highlighted by Ferguson, as state lawmakers consider measures on the topic. He deferred to municipal leaders to work with lawmakers if they need legislation on topics such as racial profiling and special prosecutors for police shootings.

Election judges process incoming ballots at the Denver Election Headquarters in downtown Denver on Nov. 4, 2014. Close races in Colorado are drawing a last minute rush to vote on election day. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Using the word “recount” around a campaign manager is akin to mentioning “Macbeth” by name to a Shakespearean actor inside a theater — both terms are guaranteed to draw a nasty look (and maybe a dirty word or two).

But given the tightness of Colorado’s gubernatorial race, and perhaps the fight for U.S. Senate between Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Cory Gardner, it’s worth examining how a recount would work.

Two events can trigger a recount in Colorado. The first is automatic — if a leading candidate is ahead by 0.5 percent or less, then the Secretary of State is required to conduct a recount. In that case, the state would pay for it.

WASHINGTON — A new poll of likely Colorado voters again found Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat Mark Udall in a statistical tie — a result that tracks with most, but not all, of the polling done so far in this fiercely-fought race.

The automated survey of 652 likely Colorado voters by Public Policy Polling has Gardner ahead two percentage points on Udall, the one-term incumbent. Gardner’s 47 percent to 45 percent advantage, however, is within the 3.8 percent margin of error listed by PPP, which contacted voters Sept. 19 to Sept. 21.

Of those polled, 50 percent supported President Barack Obama in the last election versus 44 percent who backed Mitt Romney. Party registration was divided almost exactly: 34 percent were Democrats, 33 percent were Republicans and 34 percent self-identified as an affiliation other than the two major political parties.

The Senate results, however, were just one piece of the 25-question survey. Several questions focused on the issue of “tax fairness” and a PPP memo that accompanied the survey opined that support for this idea was strong enough that “it appears to be a core value held by the public.”

In reaching that conclusion, the firm relied on questions framed as such:

“Now I’m going to read you a list of positions a candidate for U.S. Senate might take, and then ask you if you’d be much more likely, somewhat more likely, somewhat less likely, or much less likely to vote for that candidate, or would it not make a difference. Here’s the first one: A candidate who wants to make sure the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”

[47 percent were “much more likely” and 17 percent “somewhat more likely”]

And this question:

“Burger King is buying a Canadian company, and it will change its corporate address to Canada from the United States to reduce what it pays in taxes. Do you approve or disapprove of this?”

[50 percent strongly disapproved and 19 percent somewhat disapproved]

A few thoughts to keep in mind when reading the PPP results. Partisans previously have accused the North Carolina-based firm of having a liberal bias, a claim that poll guru Nate Silver explored in this 2012 blog post. But PPP also was credited for its accuracy in forecasting election results that year.

The U.S. Department of Transportation funding, announced Tuesday by Sen. Mark Udall, will ensure that the train runs for at least the next two decades and is being touted by leaders in southern Colorado as a game-changer that preserves the economic vitality of communities that rely on the decades-old route. Magliari offered some more insight into the future of the line in an interview Wednesday with The Denver Post.

In August, volunteers with Emergency Disaster Services of the Salvation Army fed members of the Colorado National Guard. While the federal government is shut down, guardsmen again get local support as the state pays the cost of their work on flood recovery. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)

For now, it’s all about the floods. Colorado’s state government leaders are assessing which federal responsibilities it might have to take on for the duration of the federal shutdown, given the furlough of more than 800,000 federal workers.

Roxane White, Gov. John Hickenlooper’s chief of staff, said Thursday afternoon that the state is asking several federal agencies for approval to take over duties those agencies might serve to help the recovery from last month’s epic floods.

Those responsibilities include permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to inspect flooded nursing homes, or testing wastewater in disaster areas. The state also could step in to help people in the flood areas who depend on federal food programs, as well as small businesses recovering from the flood.

Lynn Bartels thinks politics is like sports but without the big salaries and protective cups. The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog has named her one of Colorado's best political reporters and tweeters.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.